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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27647012">Finding Each Other and Ourselves</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems'>winter_hiems</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Legacy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age of X-Man (Marvel Comics), Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic David Haller, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Jewish Character, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Guilt, House of X/Powers of X, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, Kissing, Krakoa, Mental Health Issues, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resurrection, Survivor Guilt, Tenderness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:40:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27647012</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Precog resurrection is finally allowed on Krakoa, which means that David gets to see Ruth again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ruth Aldine/David Haller</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Finding Each Other and Ourselves</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A note on the timeline:</p><p>2014: The end of X-Men Legacy. David erases himself from reality and leaves a remnant of himself in Ruth’s mind.<br/>2018: David vanishes from Ruth’s mind.<br/>Early 2019: Ruth is murdered during the Age of X-Man timeline.<br/>Mid-to-late 2019: The mutant island nation of Krakoa is established. Precogs are not allowed to be resurrected.<br/>2020: Precog resurrection is allowed on Krakoa.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“David! David Haller! David Haller, I need to talk to you! David Haller! Come on! David Haller! Turn up goddamit! Legion!”
</p><p>
“Don’t fucking call me that. You know I hate it.”
</p><p>
Megan turned around to face the guy she’d been calling for. She hadn’t seen him in nearly six years, but David in his early twenties wasn’t much different from David in his late teens. The skinny figure and angular face had barely changed.
</p><p>
Before, he’d only ever worn one outfit, the only clothes he owned: orange sweatpants, white shirt, black combat boots, sleeveless black leather jacket. Today, however, he wore dark grey overalls which might once have been black, and black Doc Martens that crunched in the gravel of the empty American parking lot she’d travelled to from Krakoa to try and get this meeting.
</p><p>
“What’s this about, Megan?”
</p><p>
They hadn’t talked since the incident with Nate Grey, and even then, they hadn’t been alone together, so an extended conversation hadn’t been an option. The last she’d seen of him, he’d been casting off Nate Grey’s possession and had then promptly vanished.
</p><p>
“You know Krakoa?”
</p><p>
“The island in the Pacific that my dad’s on the ruling council of? Yeah, the news had reached me. What about it?”
</p><p>
Usually David rubbed her the wrong way, but Megan figured he had a right to be pissy with her. She shouldn’t have called him Legion. “They just allowed precog resurrections. They’re bringing her back, David.”
</p><p>
His eyes glazed over. “Are –” he looked down at a bare patch of ground. “Are you sure of this? Certain?”
</p><p>
“Would I have asked you here if I wasn’t?”
</p><p>
He ran a hand over his face. “It’s been over a year, I – will you tell me when it’s done? When she’s back?”
</p><p>
Megan sighed. “You know, she was really broken up when you disappeared from her brain. I could hear her crying herself to sleep. Where were you, David?”
</p><p>
His shoulders slumped. “I try not to think about it. What I will say is this: If I’d been at my full mental and physical capabilities, do you think that anything could have stopped me from coming to her?”
</p><p>
“You had… issues?”
</p><p>
His eyes were twin pits of grief and exhaustion. “Yeah. Let’s call it that.”
</p><p>
She scuffed her trainer against the tarmac. “David, you know that I don’t like you much. And because of that, you don’t like me much. But… Ruth was one of my best friends, and being with you made her really, really happy. When she’s alive again, I think I’d like to see her that happy. So I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you when she’s back.”
</p><p>
They exchanged mobile numbers.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
Once Ruth had washed off the goo from the egg her new body had hatched out of, there had been a lot of hugging.
</p><p>
Giddy with the excitement of having her friend back, Megan had all-but dragged her around Krakoa to see the sights. Later, after Ruth’s first meal in her new body, she’d taken Ruth aside.
</p><p>
“There’s someone who wants to see you.”
</p><p>
“Who?”
</p><p>
“I can’t explain here. We need to go somewhere nobody will see us or overhear us.”
</p><p>
So she’d led Ruth through one of Krakoa’s portals to the Westchester Institute, which now sat empty.
</p><p>
Once they were there, Megan sent a text.
</p><p>
He came down in a beam of blue light.
</p><p>
Megan would never have said this about David before today, but boy did the man know how to make an effort.
</p><p>
His hair was neatly braided back off his face.
</p><p>
The dark blue suit fitted perfectly.
</p><p>
The coal-black coat was knee-length and as much as Megan didn’t want to admit it to herself, looked really fucking cool.
</p><p>
She turned to Ruth to see her reaction. Ruth had a hand pressed to her mouth. If she’d had eyes, they would have been wide with shock.
</p><p>
David offered her a small smile. “Hey.” His voice was soft, and his gaze was soft too; he had eyes for Ruth alone.
</p><p>
After a moment’s hesitation, Ruth sprinted towards him and hugged him tightly around the chest.
</p><p>
Megan turned and went back through the portal, leaving them to their moment.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>
They hugged for a very long time.
</p><p>
He didn’t want to let her go.
</p><p>
God, after all this time, and she even smelled the same.
</p><p>
She was so warm. How had he forgotten that she was warm?
</p><p>
Eventually they did pull apart.
</p><p>
“David.”
</p><p>
“Ruth.” He said her name as an exhalation.
</p><p>
“You’re alive.”
</p><p>
“And so are you.”
</p><p>
“How… I woke up one day and you were gone. You weren’t in my head anymore, and people remembered you when they hadn’t before.”
</p><p>
“I know. I think whatever I did to erase myself reversed. So that I was gone from your head and everyone else could remember me again.”
</p><p>
She looked him up and down. “You look nice.”
</p><p>
“Thanks. I figured that you wouldn’t come back from the dead every day so…” A pause. “Can I show you something? I want to show you where I live now.”
</p><p>
“Okay.”
</p><p>
So he took her home.
</p><p>
After eleven years in various mental institutions, followed by nearly a year on the run, followed by four years in Ruth’s mind, David was still getting the hang of personal possessions.
</p><p>
Looking at his house now, knowing that Ruth was looking at it too, he realised that he should have made it seem more homely. It looked so bare.
</p><p>
The basics of furniture.
</p><p>
A small stack of DVDs next to the TV.
</p><p>
Nice one, idiot. Your resurrected lover comes over, and you remembered to clean, but you forgot to make your house look a place where someone would actually live.
</p><p>
He’d put a mezuzah up by the front door, but that was pretty much as far as he’d gone for personalisation.
</p><p>
“It’s nice,” said Ruth, because Ruth was an angel who was probably trying to make him feel good. She went to take a look out of the window. “Wow, what a view.”
</p><p>
He went to stand next to her. “Yeah, I knew I wanted a place in the mountains ever since I lived in the Himalayas. All up high and away from it all. Sometimes I paint the view. I’m an artist now. Didn’t think the paintings would sell, but they do. I make more from it than I thought I would, and I don’t need much money anyway.”
</p><p>
The suit was pretty much the only luxury he’d bought himself. He’d had to restrain himself from screaming while the tailor measured him for it. It turned out that being measured for a suit was uncomfortably similar to having a few nurses size you up because a teenage growth spurt meant that your straitjacket didn’t fit <i>again</i>.
</p><p>
But he had to admit that he looked bloody good in a three-piece.
</p><p>
“So this is what you do?” asked Ruth. “You live in the mountains. You paint.”
</p><p>
“Yes. Uh – there are a few abstract paintings of you in a few galleries around and about. I might be able to get the paintings taken down if you want.”
</p><p>
Her shoulders slumped, and David realised that he’d probably said absolutely the wrong thing. “Where were you?” was what she said next. “David, I thought you were gone. I couldn’t find you, no matter how hard I looked. So I figured that either you were dead or you didn’t want to be found. But you’re here with me now, so maybe it wasn’t the second thing, but it clearly wasn’t the first either.”
</p><p>
“I was…” He frowned as his brain once again refused to cooperate with what he needed from it. Over a year, and he still couldn’t properly remember the start of it. “I came back, but I wasn’t exactly myself. I’m not talking about alters here, I mean… I couldn’t remember all that much. I knew my name and I knew that I was a mutant with DID and I knew who my father was but… I couldn’t remember all the little things that make me who I am. And I couldn’t remember you. The worst thing was that at the time I didn’t even realise that something was wrong. I was this… stripped back version of myself. Even my alters were different. Simpler. My mindscape was barren grassland, more basic even than when I was a kid.
</p><p>
“Then one day that version of me – I’d just been wandering around, really, hitch-hiking – decided to see a therapist for PTSD. She treated me pro bono, said I was interesting enough that she’d do it for free. She wasn’t trying to help with my memory, but… I started to remember things. Then in the middle of one of our sessions, I had a seizure. My mindscape rewrote itself back to the way it should have been. I remembered everything, and I remembered you. I was a mess for a bit afterwards, but one I got myself together I went to Westchester, except by then…”
</p><p>
“Nate Grey,” said Ruth quietly. “And I was dead.”
</p><p>
“And you were dead,” David echoed, his voice dull with grief. “So I mourned. And I tried to recover from what Nate Grey did to me. And I wondered, if I’d been able to remember sooner, if I’d got to you sooner, if I’d have been able to save you. But I needed something to do every day, so I drew and I painted, and when there were a lot of paintings I sold them – remember Santi? That kid I helped all those years ago? He’s an artist now, he helped me sell them. Said it was the least he could do after what I did for him. And they sold well, so now that’s what I do. I mean, I have a job now. Never thought I’d have a career but it’s happening. To be honest, I never thought I’d make it to my twenties but somehow I did that too.” He’d talked too much. He shut up.
</p><p>
Ruth turned until they were standing face to face. “I missed you. I missed you so fucking much when you were gone.”
</p><p>
“I missed you too. I mean, we had five years together. Best five years of my life, even though I didn’t have a body for four of them. Then it was all gone.”
</p><p>
Ruth was the one to move first – David didn’t want to make assumptions, so he only started moving when she did, and then they were kissing long and deep, but once they pulled apart they realised that the kiss had ruined what little composure each of them had been trying to hold on to, and then they were both kneeling on the floor, clinging to each other and sobbing.
</p><p>
After that, the kisses tasted of salt.
</p><p>
Later, they sat close together, hand in trembling hand.
</p><p>
“David?”
</p><p>
“Yeah?”
</p><p>
“You’re trying very hard for me, aren’t you? With the suit, and the house all neat and stuff?”
</p><p>
He ran a hand through his hair, then waved a hand to telekinetically undo the braids. “I guess I was just trying to show you that – that I’m not some dumb teenager anymore. I know I made mistakes with you, and you stayed with me in spite of that and we talked through my bad decisions, and I’ll still be a mess sometimes, but…”
</p><p>
“Oh,” Ruth breathed, “You want me to stay.”
</p><p>
David looked over at her, the most important person in his life. “I wasn’t going to ask you. I didn’t feel like I could. But, yes. I want to finish painting for the day and find you here. I want to cook you dinner – I can cook now, by the way. I want to watch bad movies with you while we both talk shit about how bad they are. I want us to go on dates again.”
</p><p>
“Okay.”
</p><p>
“Wait, what? You’re – you’re just going to move in with me? Not that I’m complaining, I’m really not, I’m just surprised.”
</p><p>
She shrugged. He’d missed all her little gestures, he was realising. He’d missed the way that Ruth shrugged. “Something about Krakoa really creeps me out. Besides, I’ll still be able to visit Krakoa if I want to.”
</p><p>
“Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up in case you liked it, but something about Krakoa feels so <i>wrong</i>.”
</p><p>
“Creepy.”
</p><p>
“Definitely. Oh, and if you want to redecorate then that’s fair.”
</p><p>
Ruth gave a small laugh. “For an artist, you might want to put some art on the walls.”
</p><p>
“We can go through my studio later. Can I show you the garden first?”
</p><p>
“You have a garden?”
</p><p>
“I’m a proper adult now, I have a garden. There are even flowers in it.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>David doesn’t really know how to garden. He just uses his powers. Some of the plants in his garden are never-before-seen species and this is completely unintentional on his part. He just wanted ‘purple flowers’. He wasn’t paying attention to what type.</p><p>David coming down in a beam of blue light is a reference to when David and Ruth are dancing together in the background of the Young Avengers New Year’s Party.</p><p>It is once again Fixing X-Men Canon Hours on this fanfic account.</p><p>This is sort of a sternly-worded letter about the way David has been handled since X-Men Legacy. His 2019 mini-series had some terrible characterisation; he basically wasn’t David, and it didn’t even mention the events of X-Men Legacy. The same goes for his later appearance in Uncanny X-Men during the Age of X-Man event.</p><p>So I’ve decided to give that shitty characterisation some meaning here. In this fic, David wasn’t acting himself during Legion (2019) because his mind was damaged by his return to reality. The events of X-Men Legacy weren’t mentioned because he literally couldn’t remember them.</p><p>I’ve skimmed over the events of Age of X-Man because frankly nothing about David’s characterisation in that comic could be salvaged, except for the way he turned up at the X-mansion in a dark blue three-piece. In fact, one of my notes in the planning of this fic was ‘David serving looks on a fucking platter’. He’s never worn a suit before, but boy can he pull it off. He also serves looks in a pair of overalls like the artist he is.</p><p>(He doesn’t know that he looks cool and fashionable in the overalls. He doesn’t know enough about fashion to know this.)</p><p>I’ve already written Love in the time of Krakoa, which was a look at David and Ruth getting back together when David arranges for Ruth’s resurrection, but this fic is something different. Professor X mentioned that they would eventually allow precog resurrection on Krakoa, and in Love in the time of Krakoa, David and Ruth are still teenagers. To write it, I engineered the timelines so that David and Ruth are about seventeen in the timeline of the fic. In this fic, I’ve let the timelines run at the same time as the comic releases, so that David and Ruth are in their early twenties. A little older, a little wiser.</p><p>Comments and kudos are always welcome &lt;3</p><p>Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. I am not making money from this work.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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